Frequently Asked Questions

What is knowledge management?

The deliberate and on-going attempt to capture and reuse the collective learnings of groups of individuals bound together by a common purpose. There are a wide variety of technologies that support this umbrella term. For example, Document Vaults, Search Engines, Collaborative Portals, Rule Bases, Workflow Engines, Expertise Registries.

How is Auros different?

Auros possesses three distinct characteristics

The atomic knowledge concept:

Instead of creating and storing documents Auros breaks down knowledge into tiny bits of structure which are more manageable.

Bottom up approach:

Groups form organically as “Communities of Practice” and user communities to form at a grass root level. Knowledge develops in these small groups, but gathers and aggregates across the larger organization.

Flow-up or Push approach to delivering know-how:

The insight, learning or know-how originates from any department, organization or geography and finds its way to any other department, organization or geography where it may be needed. ‘Flow-Up’ is the ability for knowledge to be automatically allocated into the process where it is continuously evaluated.

These kinds of behaviors cannot be achieved in the form of documents, wikis, search engines or KBE tools.

What are the essential elements of an engineering knowledge management strategy?

Active and agile knowledge

The old knowledge library paradigm is too static. Knowledge is active, alive and has greatest value when used. It must be accessible, useful and relevant. Engineers don’t have time to stop what they are doing to dig for a manual — assuming they know where to look in the first place. Knowledge must be pushed to workers in context.

Accessible, complete and current knowledge

Knowledge is stored in a variety of disconnected documents that quickly fall out of date. An engineer may not have time to search for specification documents, best practices presentations and various spreadsheets of data. And if he grabs old parameters without realizing they are outdated, he may invest hours in a solution that is totally out of specification. Systems must make it easy for users to access complete and current knowledge.

Make knowledge capture part of the process

If people don’t have time to go search through documents, they surely don’t have time to create them. Efforts can vary in quality, depending on who creates them. Capturing knowledge, evaluating it, refining it and updating it has to be an organic part of the workflow — or it simply will not happen.

Structured flexibility

Knowledge takes many forms and is used in many ways. An engineer might need materials specifications, dimension measurements, picture maps, work instructions and inter-dependency schedules to design a part. The system must be flexible and able to completely capture and structure that content for access and reuse.

Reward knowledge contributions

Some people fear sharing their knowledge will make it easier to ship their job to China. Others take genuine pride in being the go-to person when someone has a question. A well-managed knowledge system uses such cultural issues to motivate, recognize and reward people for contributing. They create a virtuous circle of engagement, trust and use, with practical rewards that encourage more engagement and more use.

How do I get started?

It’s often been quoted that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. This anecdote holds true with Auros, but our advantage is that as an enterprise system, we are not top-down architected, like PLM. Our system is organically grown from the bottom up. You start by authoring a Knowledge Packet (K-PAC), then another, and another, and as your knowledge amasses, you begin to leverage the power of the system.

Each of our deployments has started with a small core group of Subject Matter Experts (5-10 engineers) and has built out from there. Once people experience the power of the system and are able to see firsthand how their knowledge is activated instead of buried in a document, the initiative behind the system gains momentum. As recognition of the power of Auros begins to spread, other groups and teams of people are incentivized to become part of the community.

The longer you wait and do nothing about managing your knowledge base, the bigger the challenges become, as employees leave or retire.

Contact us today for an overview demonstration and we will show you how to harness the power of your technical know-how in a way that activates it to drive decision making.